The Murder of the Phantom
by SilverRavenStar
Summary: The Phantom overhears Christine and Raoul pledging their love. Oneshot, angsty, completed. Rated M due to the Phantom's thoughts. REVIEWS always loved!


**Author's Note: **This was originally part of my much longer work, "Phantom," which told the backstory of Erik before he became that Opera Ghost we all know and love. Then I a) lost interest, and b) encountered the work of the same name by Susan Kay, which did everything I had aspired to, so I saw no point in trudging over familiar ground again. There were still some parts of that work that I liked, though, and this is one of them. I've read the original book and seen the Gerard Butler/Emmy Rossum movie, and quite frankly I prefer movie-verse (partly because Butler is hotter than flame, but that's another story….) but this follows (mostly) book-verse. The Phantom listens to Christine and Raoul pledging their love, and needless to say he isn't happy about it… This is rated M since although nothing untoward happens, the Phantom's thoughts can be a little gruesome. Hope you enjoy. Reviews always loved.

The hot air circulating sluggishly in the ventilation shafts tugged at my cloak like an insistent lover – that is a strange metaphor for I who have never had one – and I could feel the first strains of age in my chest as I slithered up through my labyrinth of secret passages. I passed entrances to dressing rooms, scenery repositories, dance chambers, other scented with the pungent perfume of makeup oil and drying paint, of sweat and lovemaking and candlewax. And then I reached the final trap-door, and cautiously eased it open.

They were talking, the boy and Christine, the two of them on the roof as the sunset gilded gold across the sky beyond. She was confiding in him – spilling the secrets I had trusted to her as easily as if they were rotting vegetables, pouring them into his eager hands as he groped for understanding of _my _miracle, _my _domain!

I concealed myself beneath a fortuitously placed statue and drew my cloak around my shoulders, but I must not have been careful enough, for a brief shadow swept the paving stones and both of them looked up. I froze at once, and listened again to their conversation.

I still do not know why I stood there. Surely there were other things to be done than to wait and let a nail be driven into my heart, slowly and surely, with an excruciating twist that lodged it there forever? Christine was telling that _boy _everything, of the mirror on its pivot, and the boat and the subterranean lake, and my house, and the room where she had spent the weeks of her capture.

Capture. I disliked that word. I had not held her captive; she had been there of her own volition, and had eventually learned not to fear me! She had been terrified and reticent, eventually softening, yielding to me, the Angel of Music that she owed everything to.

But now her voice trembled prettily and her eyes were wet and she clung to the shoulder of that fawning, well-dressed imbecile, who stroked her hair and swore vengeance for what he evidently imagined as her suffering at my hands. He vowed to chase me to earth like the beast he believed me to be, to make me pay.

I stood in silence and listened in disbelief. Then, silently, without attracting attention, I slipped across the shadows on the far end of the courtyard and climbed up the statue that kept watch at the end, Apollo's lyre.

Balanced lightly in the entangling stone folds of the sun god, I gazed down on the children below. Christine's head was on the Vicomte's shoulder and they gazed with a limpid innocence into the other's eyes. Christine was so white and lovely in her lacy dress, and her hair tumbled in sunlit curls down her back. She was perfection, an angel, a creation of air and light.

And then there was the Vicomte, not much older than she, with the broad shoulders and the long straight legs and the honey-colored hair that curled around the fair and unmarked face that I would have traded the tattered black remnants of my soul for, if only to please Christine.

Was this what she wanted? A man that she could gaze on in the sunlight and not be repulsed? Would she only ever delude herself with me in the darkness, when she could touch the parts of me that were as yet still strong and whole?

I had tried to show her that I was more than my face, but she, the shallow vain little creature, fond of frippery and adornment, had recoiled – ! She the telltale Pandora, who had opened a box best left untouched – ! Her childish horror and despair – I hated her, I hated her with all the passion borne of a long life spent mired in it – I would kill her, watch her blue eyes bulge out of her blackened face as the Punjab lasso strangled her breath and life away –

But no, I did not hate her, I loved her, I adored her, I wanted this lovely creature that was so vastly superior to myself… she was all that I lived for, her happiness was paramount to me, I existed in a world fueled by the desire to see her, touch her…

And here she was, betraying me to that pampered, fondled sorry excuse for a nobleman, who was being incited into all sorts of vengeful rages on her behalf –

I let out my breath in a shaking sigh, but still took care that they should hear nothing of it. Beneath my mask, my ruined face itched, but I paid it no heed and soon enough the sensation faded. I drew the voluminous raven-black folds of my cloak over my shoulders and my head, smothering the last feeble coughs of light as the gossamer clouds drowned the great red orb of the sun.

And now Christine was speaking – her voice that thrilled me, tugged at my heart – and her arms entwined about the Vicomte's neck and this is what she said:

"Oh, my betrothed of a day, if I did not love you, I would not give you my lips! Take them, for the first time and the last!"

And then I watched, and his gleaming head bent to hers, and their mouths met and clung and tasted, and love coiled into the air like a poison and stopped my throat and my heart, and this is what I saw and that was _betrayal._

Here she was, betrothing herself, making pledges which she had no right to, turning from me to that Creature, that Beast, whose hands were threatening to slide all over her body but were instead restrained by propriety, so no whisper could besmirch his precious image! I had foresworn her from marriage so that one day she could be mine…and now….and _now…_

In the silence that surrounded me as the two lovers kissed, I became aware that I could hear my hope shattering into pieces and sliding away into crystalline rubble.

Oh Christine, my fiendish, wicked, betraying, false-hearted angel! Demon in girl-shape, possessed of a sweet face and pliable demeanor and hiding nothing but the blackest darkness within! Lying, evil temptress, who speaks so prettily and sings with the voice of heaven but is charred with the fires of hell! Damn you, damn you to rot, to wrack and ruin and eternal suffering! _Damn you!_

All you ask of him is that he love you for every waking moment – oh, Christine, faithless witch, should I know that that was all you would require, that was all I would have given! But you ask only his days from him, when my days and my nights alike have been yours, when you have made my dreams into sick-churning lust and I have lain awake and never touched them at all because I cannot sleep for thought of you!

Who has given you everything? Who has _made _you what you are – pampered, adored little prima donna – and who can take it away just as easily? Who can close the Angel of Music to you forever and ignore your fevered pleas, let you bash your pretty head against a wall in desperation until it bled, until consciousness fades into a ghost and darkness claims you? Who can slip into your dressing-room unseen, unheard, and stealthily coil a noose around your neck that you would never see at all?

_It is not the Vicomte de Chagny!_

You are a lying vixen, and I will punish you. Make no mistake, Christine, I will. I will come on you when it is dark and then I will snatch you and you will not escape me then. You will struggle. I might enjoy it. No doubt you will attempt to scratch my face – such a feeble, feminine defense will make no matter against me. But I will have your wrists, and I will not let go, and if you struggle too violently, I might break them.

And then I will carry you down through the mirror and into the lake and if my door is closed, I shall use your pretty delicate face to smash it open. I will march to my grotto and I shall grind you into the hideousness that you profess to abhor. I will make you kiss it, light a candle to see it better, touch it with your fingers and you shall lie through your teeth that it is beautiful, because you are afraid. And each time that you lie, I will hit you. _That will teach you!_

I will grasp you by the hair and force you to your knees and you will _serve _me and then I shall throw you down and spread your pale delicate thighs and you will squirm and scream like a sniveling white worm. And then I will use you, I will hurt you, I will plow and plant you like a furrow, until you bleed and until you _scream _for mercy and beg for me to stop but I will not, not until you are moaning and shaking and you _know _that I am your master and I will always be –

Oh, Christine. My darling, my darling, what have you done to me? I am dying here, I feel myself disintegrating. I love you. I love you. You are my heart, my soul, my life, the reason that I wake up when I could end it so easily in the darkness and silence, and never have anybody know or care. I cling to the hope that you _would _and that keeps me straining upwards, swimming through the never-ending blackness in search of the light.

My dearest, my sweetest, you must not recoil from me. You must never feel as if you need anyone else to give you tenderness. I spoke harshly, out of my mind. I could never hurt you. I would catch your tears on my finger and rock you to sleep in my arms. I would sing you lullabies and tell you stories, if that was what you wished. I would step out in full daylight and count myself blessed for the jeering, if only you asked me.

Christine. Oh, my love, my darling, my dearest, my very own, my angel. I would never hurt you. I could not. I could never. I would adore you.

I would marry you – I would give you a church wedding, I who have forsworn all notion of god now and forever – I would stand up with you before a minister with you in a beautiful dress and the organ swelling and swear to guard and cherish you.

I would adore you. I would live in the daytime, outside the Opera House, as normal men do. I would build you a house. I would give you children – these would not be scarred – and you could cosset them and make them afternoon tea and ask after their schoolwork, and then I would take them on my knee and play them music. And we would laugh. For you, I would remember how.

_So why do you turn from me? _Why do you run to the arms of that pompous little boy, that child gifted with noble titles and expensive clothes? _What can he give you that I cannot? _Is it a face, a pretty face? _Are you as spoilt and shallow as that, you poisonous bitch?_

You have killed me, Christine. I feel the blow landed, wedging mortally deep, splintering out in freezing shards beneath my ribs. I close my eyes. I wait to fall. Apollo's lyre will not bear me up. This is a darkness from which I can never return. Oh my lying, poisonous, darling angel, you have killed me. Are you proud?


End file.
